Secret Don Juans

Don Brash

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac", former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger once famously said.

Like National Party leader Don Brash, the powerful Kissinger wasn't your classic heartbreaker. Bespectacled, though with a full head of hair, we can only take his word for his own sexual allure. But this week the 65-year-old Brash, a man with grandfather glasses and a noticeable comb-over, emerged as an unlikely Don Juan, following allegations that he had an affair with an attractive businesswoman, years after his public admission that his second marriage was itself the result of an affair.

Neither Brash nor his alleged paramour, Diane Foreman, have denied the allegations, although Foreman's husband, wealthy businessman Bill Foreman has said the claims are "rubbish".

But, as one senior National Party source said on Friday: "Assume for one second it's true that he's having a torrid affair - at least he's a hot-blooded, red-blooded heterosexual man."

And it must be noted that Dr Brash, though blessed with neither good looks nor great taste in suits, has charm, and knows how to talk to women. When he was Governor of the Reserve Bank, he could be particularly attentive to female reporters - noting changes in their appearance even a year after he'd last seen them - and at ease in their presence.

So, is his appeal to women proof that Kissinger's aphrodisiac claim still holds true? No, say former MPs spoken to by the Herald on Sunday. New Zealanders no longer see senior politicians as particularly powerful or attractive people, they say.

Women are more likely to be attracted to a sports or music star or a wealthy octogenarian than a male inhabitant, or wannabe inhabitant, of the Beehive.

And Parliament is apparently no longer the sexual hothouse it used to be in the hard drinking, hard-living days of Rob Muldoon.

"You're so tired, and so busy, you don't have time to have affairs," says one woman who left Parliament last year. But she did say she saw many MPs who "believed being an MP made them something special".

Former Act Party leader and parliamentary veteran Richard Prebble - whose own marriage to former wife Doreen became a very public break-up - says the conduct and behaviour in the House these days is no different to that seen in the community.

"The marriage break-up rate is no greater than in the general community, it's just that people in public office find themselves living in a goldfish bowl.

"The conduct is better now. The most spectacular difference is one which again reflects society as a whole, and that's the amount of drinking done. When I arrived in Parliament alcoholism was a major problem. There were four or five bars, now there is only one.

"Another thing that's affected the lifestyle of Parliament is we don't have the brutal all-night sessions which saw groups of MPs having to hang around to keep up the quorum.

"They were too tired to work but they had to stay awake so they drank - and a lot of poker was played."

Former Act MP and justice spokesman, Stephen Franks, who left Parliament last year to resume his career as a commercial corporate lawyer, says male MPs are more likely to find themselves having an affair out of loneliness, than because they fancy themselves as a powerful person.

"Politics is a lonely and sometimes shattering experience. The normal population is not drawn to it. People in it are not loyal to each other and there's a lot of ego there. You can be betrayed by colleagues and you look for reassurance.

"I've certainly seen men feeling that. The environment is very hard to describe to their wives and to anyone who hasn't been there, so relationships founded in that place have an advantage from the start. They can talk the shorthand."

Franks says that forever imprinted on him will be the "ruthlessness" he saw in his first days in the House when senior politicians publicly turned on one of their own MPs to score points against the opposition.

"It's a very lonely place for people (who live) outside Wellington."

Franks believes the threat of sexual harassment prosecution has stamped out much of the "frivolous, teasing" behaviour between MPs, staff and journalists.

"But I have a sense that might have been replaced with a lot of serious bonking."

He notes that the sexual frisson in Parliament was little different to his days as a junior law clerk, when the female typing and secretarial pools at his office took huge delight in setting blush-making snares for young, naive males, such as summoning them to pick up parcels of condoms.

Auckland University senior psychology lecturer Dr Niki Harre, sister of former MP Laila Harre, is also not convinced that Parliament is more ofa hotbed of affairs than any other business or enterprise.

But she does see the temptations if MPs are away from home a lot.

"It's about people's desire to belong and have intimate relationships. If you put them in situations for periods of time, even days, from the people they normally have close relationships with, they are going to try to establish another relationship.

"We also know that people tend to have sexual relationships, as well as other kinds of relationships, with people who are familiar to them, that they work with. In that sense, when you have people who are seeing other people a lot and don't have their usual closeness with family because that is disrupted three or four days a week, you start to get the ingredients."

So is power a sexual attractant? Yes, says Harre, but not particularly political power.

"There is a lot of research in psychology which suggests women are attracted to that. I don't think there's any doubt women traditionally have found older, powerful men attractive. What is in doubt is whether it is a genuine or a strategic attraction."

Harre says the attraction may be at a genetic, evolutionary level, not a conscious decision.

"It's about choosing a mate who will give us healthy offspring and help us look after those offspring. If there is something going on at that level, who are the people in society who will offer that? Intelligent people who will go out and get the resources, social people who can manage relationships. So a high status man is a clear winner for a woman."

Harre says at this level of response, good looks indicate health and well-being and the promise of healthy children, but there are so many examples of sexually, physically unattractive and older men attracting women that the element of status, power and resources-provision potential are obviously strong in those men.

But why succumb to the temptation of an affair when a lot is at stake and the prospect of being sprung almost certain - especially in a gossip hotbed like Parliament?

Harre and former MPs who talked to the Herald on Sunday did not believe the chances of an affair being discovered and gossiped about were any more likely than in a bank, a law office or a McDonald's outlet.

Harre said it was a mistake to think that people at the centre of scandals had thought things through.

"I'd be very dubious that there is some sort of psychological-analytical self-destructive thing going on, and more likely to think that people are cognitively unable to think through all the consequences at any single moment in time.

"Why would anyone risk an entire domestic set-up, years of trust, relationships with their children to have an affair? There are lots and lots and lots of reasons, the novelty, the stimulation.

"People have this constant security-versus-exploration type dynamic going on, and the affair thing is one way to lively up your life."

Harre said whether Brash would be forgiven by the voting public for his alleged affair depended on previous allegiances.

"Almost everyone forgives their best friend an affair, but the friend of the spouse or whatever is going to think that person is a horrible sod. And people find it very hard to cope with hypocrisy."